Wednesday, 17 October 2012

The voices of China’s workers

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This video is a presentation by Leslie T. Chang via TEDTalks, so granted it’s full of TEDitude,* but it’s definitely worth a listen, especially in the context of "supply chain,” the issue raised by OUR Walmart.

Here is the section at the beginning that I took notice of. After reading some brief aspirational quotes:

[CHANG:]
… All of these speakers, by the way, are young women 18 or 19 years
old. So I spent two years getting to know assembly line workers like
these in the South China factory city called Dong Wan [phonetic]. Certain subjects came up over
and over: How much money they made; what kind of husband they hoped to
marry; whether they should jump to another factory, or stay where they
were. Other subjects came up almost never, including living conditions
that to me looked close to prison life. Ten or fifteen workers in one
room, 50 people sharing a single bathroom, days and nights ruled by the
factory clock. Everyone they knew lived in similar circumstances, and it
was still better than the dormitories and homes of rural China.

Workers
who migrate from the country to the city, from the farm to the factory,
re-live, perhaps, a story that is centuries old by now. But it is new
to them! What I like about Chang’s presentation is that she treats the
workers as protagonists, as agents. That is to say, she respects them.
But listen to the whole thing! What do you think?
NOTE * Basically, the assumption that “creative class” types both in the audience and on the stage are drivers, instead of, at best, back seat drivers (and they’re not always at their best). That said, the creative class really can be genuinely creative, and often TED lives up to its own ideals for “ideas worth spreading.”